


Rising, Or How To Make a Good Impression on the Natives

by NyeLew



Series: Turretverse [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AI, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:31:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NyeLew/pseuds/NyeLew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Atlantis Expedition gets to Atlantis and finds that not everything is rosy. They encounter a situation off-world that has to be dealt with carefully. Part 2 of Turretverse AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was unlike anything he’d ever seen before, was John’s first thought after he rematerialised in another galaxy, in a city that existed thousands of years before humans had mud huts. But then his attention was drawn away from that by Sumner’s orders for an ATA-negative recon team to scout the immediate area; they’d decided against allowing ATA-positives to switch anything on accidentally.

And then Weir was talking, giving the speech she’d no doubt practised over and over again.

“This is it. We’re here. Welcome, everyone,” she said, standing in front of the gathered crowd of people and materials. “Thanks to all your hard work we made it through with everything we’d planned, as far as we can tell. So congratulations. But the hard work isn’t over: already we have teams out, scouting the area to see just where it is we are. We’ve got a lot to do, and we don’t know how long we’ve got to do it.”

John tuned out again as Sumner’s voice buzzed in his ear. There was something all the command staff had to see, apparently. Weir wound up and then joined him for the walk to Sumner’s location.

“What do you think it is?” she asked, her voice a mixture of curious and worried; really, Sumner could have found pretty much anything. He’d read some SGC reports that put the Twilight Zone to shame.

“I’m scared to say,” he replied easily. He liked Weir. She was strong and confident, and stood her ground with Sumner. Soon enough they knew anyway.

Sumner stood at what was best described as a window, looking out into vast blue nothingness. Not sky; the entire city was underwater.

“Ah, yes, exactly what I wanted you to see, Elizabeth!” said McKay. “We’re under water.”

“I can see that, Rodney.” Her expression was serene. Still, John assumed she was just holding in the panic, because it looked pretty fucking bad from his angle. “What do we _do_ about it?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” croaked McKay. “The Ancients must have submerged the city for some reason, maybe to keep it safe? It’s got a shield, look, so we’re okay for _now_.”

“For now?” questioned Weir.

“Yeah, for now?” echoed John.

“Power levels spiked when we arrived. It’s likely the city’s been in sleep mode since the Ancients left. Us coming here, with, what, 68% ATA-positives? We woke it up.” He grimaced. “We’re looking for the ZPM chamber now.”

“What-PM?” John found himself saying. It wasn’t the time to quip, but it never was, was it? He grinned despite himself.

“ZedPM. I’m Canadian,” replied McKay, not missing a beat. “Once we’ve found it we can try to hook up the generators.”

“So what do you recommend, McKay?” said Sumner, speaking for the first time. “Reel the scouts back in, restrict ATA-positive movements, what?”

“What? Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “ _I’ll_ go with one of your teams to see—”

He got cut off by the radio.

“Rodney, Dr Weir—you have got to see this now.”

It was Beckett. He caught Rodney’s look of horror and nodded grimly; another thing they had to see? Hopefully he’d just noticed they were under water.

*

When Rodney saw what Beckett was doing, he nearly screamed. He didn’t, and instead shut off the chattering Ancient woman hologram before it did any more significant power damage.

“I said not to _touch_ anything! No ATA-positives in the initial recon teams! Damn it, Carson,” he said.

“Well I really think she has something you want to hear, Rodney,” he replied. “I think I can do it without the pretty lights if you’d like.”

Rodney huffed but nodded anyway. It had sounded like a message—probably to whoever came back for the city. To them, he supposed, although they weren’t the intended recipients.

That voice echoed through the room again, and everyone gathered listened to it intently. It described how the Ancients, outnumbered by a foe of comparable strength, were pushed further and further out of the Pegasus Galaxy. How soon, the human life they had seeded through the galaxy was lost to them. How Atlantis alone stood as the last bastion of defence and then—they’d submerged the city the depths of the ocean and run back to Earth, where untold years ago they’d run away from something else.

It had echoes of Earth’s own situation, of the chaos and uncertainty the Expedition had left behind. Only to stumble into a galaxy the Ancients themselves had fled from—fled back to the place that had nearly killed them so many years before.

“Well, shit,” drawled Sheppard. “What’s the phrase? Out of the pan, into the fire?”

“There’s still a lot we don’t know about the situation. We need to take stock of what we know and come up with a plan of action. Rodney – I need Dr Zelenka to supervise Machine analysis of the situation. Then you need to see if there’s anywhere we can dial out to. Colonel, I think you and your people should take the opportunity to move equipment from the gate room.”

“Before or _after_ I work something out for the power?” He sighed. “No, no, I’ll get Chuck or Chad or whatever it is to do it, and Zelenka can help me with the power; Kavanaugh can cover the analysis, it’ll be Machines doing it anyway.”

“Whatever it takes, Rodney,” she said, which signalled the discussion was over. He didn’t bother waiting around for them to decide what else to do. He grabbed Sheppard on the way out and headed to where they thought the ZPMs were housed.

*

They’d solved the power crisis temporarily; hooking up four of their naquadah generators fixed the immediate problems but didn’t appear to help the long-term situation much. Still, Elizabeth counted it as a win. They were here, they were—safe. That was enough for now. They’d sent out two off-world teams to scout some planets Chuck had found stored in the Ancient database.

Rodney was still off somewhere, no doubt trying to get something online, and Carson was gushing over the infirmary they’d found. That meant Elizabeth was alone in a room she’d decided to claim as her office, assuming they didn’t have to evacuate the city. Rodney had assured her there’d be some way of raising the city; all it would take is a database search.

There was always a catch. They had trouble interfacing their devices with the Ancient tech, and it was unlikely the database would be easy to search. The sea could come crashing down on top of them before they’d even decoded the welcome message. The system had become even _more_ difficult to navigate after they tried to run Machine analysis, so they’d had to stop almost as soon as they’d started.

Automated defence turrets had been installed in several key areas, and from Elizabeth’s own location she could hear the inane, disturbing chatter from one of them.

 _‘Please don’t kill me. I don’t want to hurt you._ ’ The Machine voice was chilling, and eerie, and it sounded far too sincere for comfort. That was of course the point: it was meant to warn, to serve as an unnerving warning that one more step would cause—probably death, if they hadn’t used a modified ‘zat gun as a base for the tech. It was programmed to know friend from foe, and to have a strict set of circumstances in which it could fire—but it still bothered Elizabeth they had them at all, even if they were a hard-won concession.

She stood in her office and looked down at the gate room. Already they had started off-world operations; Elizabeth thought it was too soon to go crashing about and alerting the native Pegasus cultures to their presence, but the current situation left them few alternatives.

Machine analysis in this situation was a Godsend. The technology had been developed in the late 90s and before the advance was leaked to the public the SGC purchased it and its scientists and ringfenced the whole affair. By the end of the decade the SGC used so-called Machine analysis to help in decision making and planning, and specialised programs were even set to optimising BC-303 design to produce the BC-304s. Now, Elizabeth had set it to thinking about which of the options they’d thought up would be best.

What was worrying was that so far it had recommended relocation to a defensible, not-underwater, site—which was so almost not an option that Elizabeth wondered why they included it. In the event of FUBAR Protocol, as General O’Neill had called it, Earth fleet would relocate to Pegasus Galaxy. If the city went dark they would have nowhere to go.

Then a message from Sumner’s off-world team made her swear, and she promptly left all thoughts of the future behind.

“ _Dr Weir? We’re going to need some marines and a nuke. We have a situation.”_

*

Teyla Emmagan was strong. Strength was abundant in the Pegasus Galaxy. The strong survived, and the weak were stamped out, destroyed after every Cull. The Athosians were strong. They would endure, as they always had. But the Earthers, the strange people who had come through the portal—she did not know if they were strong, if they could be strong, in the face of the Wraith.

They had told her their world did not know of the Wraith, had never suffered a Cull. She had suggested that they return, then, and never set foot off-world again—and from the reaction she had had, that was not an option.

And yet the Earthers had a look about them that reminded her of those she had seen in Pegasus: a coldness born of fear, of running, the strength of a cornered animal. So she had asked leading questions, traded titbit for titbit, and the one named Major Sheppard, John, told her some of what they were fleeing from.

She did not want to tell them to what exactly they had come to, but she found the strength to do so anyway. She took John to the caves, their place of refuge and to the old city itself. She told him of the Wraith and of the horrors they brought, the devastation that came to every generation.

And then once more the Wraith came to Athos, came to cull their herd. The Earthers were not spared, and nor was Teyla. She prepared for the end, and turned to offer words of—of not comfort, as the Wraith Hive was not a place for that—but she was rebuffed.

The one called Colonel Sumner assured her that his people would come. They would not sit in the dirt and mourn their losses. They would fight and win, and bring their people home. She had asked what if they could not bring them home, what if they too were crushed under the power of the Wraith?

He had told her that if his men were lost, his people would make the Wraith burn, and destroy the Hive.

Teyla Emmagan was no fool. She did not believe Sumner understood the truth of the situation, the harsh reality that came with the Wraith—but his words gave her much to think on. What sort of people were these Earthers, to believe so strongly in their own might that even foes such as the Wraith did not scare them?

*

John had killed people before. It came with being a soldier—it was what he did, what he was trained to do. But this was something different. Sumner had been dead the moment that _thing,_ the Wraith, had touched him. The native woman, Teyla, the Athosian, had said so herself.

He’d still killed his superior officer in the field. Someone would probably run Machine analysis on the situation later before they wrote a report—John had learnt about _that_ from Jackson—and that would likely decide his fate.

Then he got the hell out of the ship and nuked it to shit. He didn’t even feel guilty: these aliens treated humans like cows, and _sucked out their youth_. He didn’t feel like any nuke ever used in history (and apparently, the SGC had used them a few more times than people knew about) was more justified than this one. If they were lucky, Teyla said the other Wraith, untold thousands, would still slumber and remain unaware of their presence.

What Teyla didn’t know was that Earth was unlucky as shit when it came to aliens. He’d read the files – a promising alliance with the Asgard, the Roswell greys, floundered because humans were still ‘too young’. Other advanced aliens, the Nox, thought they were too violent, too aggressive. Fuck that shit – they were already involved, and without advanced weaponry the Goa’uld would just steamroll them.

Probably were steamrolling them. Bound up in in the anxiety and fear about the _now_ was a queer kind of survivor’s guilt—which was totally misplaced given the current situation.

He laughed, and probably worried the other people in the Puddlejumper – not Gateship, never Gateship. He didn’t care. They were probably going through the same shit. His earlier quip about pans and fires was fitting in so many ways, so he laughed again.

McKay would probably find it funny, anyway.

*

Sumner is dead, ma’am. The words stuck in Elizabeth’s head like nothing before. On their first off-world mission they had suffered casualties, not just to themselves but to the indigenous population, and on top of it all they’d nuked an entire ship full of sentient, thinking aliens.

It did not leave a good feeling in her mouth. Or anywhere. This was supposed to have been doing it right, avoiding all of the mistakes they had already made in getting here. And the first thing they did was interfere in native conflicts and detonate nuclear devices for a quick, decisive victory.

And then to learn that these aliens, the Wraith, had a way of sending messages that might not have been prevented before their destruction—Elizabeth did not feel at all positive.

She had been debriefed by Major Sheppard, had spoken with Teyla of Athos, with Halling and a dozen others. Sumner’s death was a mercy, both to him and to the Expedition. If it prevented the Wraith from finding a way to Earth, to the Milky Way, then it was a necessity.

They had to open the city to the Athosians, of course. Their home had been destroyed, and it was still unclear whether the Expedition had simply been unlucky or if it was their own presence that had caused the problem in the first place.

And that of course had only worsened their immediate problems, boosting the power consumption and reducing the time left for shield coverage. She had already begun moving essential equipment off-world to an uninhabited planet the Athosians had provided them with. It was disheartening to sa goodbye to the city after so little time, but as the Ancients before them had known it was necessary to preserve the city for those who could come back to it, and raise it safely.

_“Elizabeth? Power levels are critical. I suggest we are leaving now.”_

It was Zelenka. If the order came from him and not Rodney, that meant it was serious. Rodney had a flair for the dramatic, but it was likely he was trying to do what he could to keep the shield up for as long as possible.

“ _Atlantis, this is Dr Weir. Prepare for evacuation immediately, Evac Protocol D.”_

She exited her office quickly, but was knocked back as the city itself started to shake. All around her she could hear people shouting, could hear to pitiful wails of the turret gun— _please don’t hurt me—_ and she knew they’d waited too long.

The shield was failing, and the city was going to flood—except it wasn’t, and Elizabeth staggered away to get a better look.

The city was rising. It had left the ocean floor and was climbing, climbing towards the surface.

 _“Elizabeth? Are you seeing this? The city had a fail-safe. We’re not dying. We’re not dying!”_ crooned Rodney over the radio.

She was seeing it. She had never seen something so beautiful. It was like—it was like tangible hope. As the tall spires of Atlantis poked above the surface the shield failed in strategic points until the whole city rested calmly atop the waves.

_“Atlantis? This is Dr Weir. Forget my last message. We’re home.”_


	2. How To Make a Good Impression on the Natives II, or How Not to Treat Your Guests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wraith bugs and gene therapies. Rodney is pissed off, Teyla is thoughtful.

In the woman the Earthers called Dr Weir, Teyla Emmagan of Athos had found strong moral character, a woman who had learnt from the wisdom of her people. Some of this she had shared with Teyla: pictures of the world from which they had come, explanations of their cultures and peoples. She had been shown a form of Earth writing, which was different from any she had seen before.

This had helped her to understand that she was dealing with a truly alien culture, one which had not been forged by the need to survive, to thrive despite the constant threat of annihilation at the hands of the Wraith. And yet they were strong anyway, and proud, and for good reason. They were not the Ancestors, and many of Athos felt that they had desecrated the fabled City; Teyla did not agree. The Earthers were the spiritual successors of the Ancestors if not their lifeblood—and Teyla was not sure of that either, since many of them seemed to possess a strange command over the city and its technology.

And they had offered the people of Athos a home, a place in Atlantis where they might be safe from the threat of the Wraith, whose activities were still unknown. So Teyla had answered their questions, informed them of potential trading partners from whom they might receive food and other necessities.

She had learnt that, although no one had made it explicit, that they were running from a war against a foe of comparable might to the Wraith. And yet they did not seem to have come unprepared, as she had seen already. The gate ships, the puddlejumpers, were not their own; yet Teyla was told the Earthers had their own ships, bigger and more powerful that were not with them. The Earthers had access to advanced weapons, and could use the legacy of the Ancestors almost as easily as if it were their own; in them Teyla had dared to place some small measure of hope that the Wraith could be defeated, even if their only goal was to find weapons to fight their own enemies.

She would learn from them, and encourage her people to learn, and perhaps together they could turn the tide and deal some damage to the Wraith. So she cultivated a friendship with Dr Weir, who had asked her to call her Elizabeth; with Major Sheppard, who had destroyed the Wraith Hive; and with Dr Rodney McKay, who was perhaps more affected by the situation than he cared to admit, but was nonetheless in command of the Expedition’s experts in technology and science.

Hope had come to Pegasus.

*

“Hopeless! It’s all hopeless,” declared Rodney, grimacing in frustration at the laptop on the desk in front of him. “Fucking Ancient subroutines are specifically designed to block any attempts by an artificial intelligence from accessing the fucking database. What the fuck?”

Zelanka, Zelonky, whatever it was, said something no doubt insulting in Czech and then sighed.

“Yes, Rodney, I know. Is very frustrating. Maybe they had problems and is security measure? In any case, we will have to do the data mining ourselves. It will be difficult but not impossible, I’m sure.”

Rodney rolled his eyes. If they’d been able to let the Machines loose on the Ancient databases he didn’t doubt they’d have working translations and good access within weeks rather than the months—at best—it would take to do it manually. So far, they had only been able to identify strings of code that signified stargate addresses—anything else was stuck behind ridiculous amounts of security. The incident with the Wraith not a week before had given an air of urgency to the whole Expedition that had already been pretty urgent to begin with. It was like a constant adrenaline rush, and more intense than any situation he’d ever faced.  He hadn’t slept properly in days.

And Sheppard had asked him to go off-world. _Please_. It’s not like Atlantis was safe either, but Atlantis had Ancient tech and knowledge in every single nook and cranny; from what he’d gathered, Pegasus was full of cultures and people exactly like the Athosians – nice people, but primitive on the whole.

“Dr McKay? I hope I am not intruding,” said the pretty Athosian leader—Taylor, or Teyla, or something. She’d taken to dropping by the lab to talk with him and sometimes with Zelenka, and she wasn’t an irritation, precisely, but she _did_ take up time.

“No, I can’t get the fucking thing to do what I want,” he said testily. “What is it?”

“I wanted to know if you had considered the Major’s offer,” she said. “I believe it is in the best interests of us all for you to accompany us off-world; we have not been able to begin without a science officer.”

“This whole galaxy is one giant death trap. No offence.” He sighed, and then turned away from his desk to look at her. “I could _die_ out there.”

“You could die here,” she replied simply. “Did the events surrounding the shield device not show you that?”

Rodney could feel his face turning red. That whole affair had been—embarrassing, to put it mildly. His fucking subconscious abject terror at being stuck in a hostile galaxy had prevented him from removing the device, even if everything had turned out okay in the end.

If ‘luring an energy being into the stargate with himself as the bait’ was within the realm of ‘okay’, which apparently it was.

“The people of Athos made the decision long ago to eschew the trappings of advanced technology in exchange for a lower profile with the Wraith; there are many Pegasus cultures who have not done so, who may have access to technology that will aid you in your struggles. Your assistance would be invaluable when dealing with them. There is perhaps much you can learn.”

He didn’t see it, personally. Any culture advanced enough for them to learn from would be taking the fight to the Wraith themselves, but he didn’t say that. Despite himself he actually _liked_ Teyla. She was smoking hot, which helped, but she’d managed to wear him down more with her serene patience and determination to get through his prickliness. Still, the Ancients had seeded life throughout this galaxy—they’d probably left some stuff behind. If he were lucky, it’d be a ZPM factory that had been pumping out ZPMs for the past 10,000 years. Or a shipyard. A shipyard would be great—they needed something that could take on one of those Hives, at the very least.

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, Dr McKay.” She nodded at him and then excused herself, and Rodney couldn’t help but feel he’d been conned, somehow.

*

Carson didn’t know how he felt about the latest round of genetic therapies he’d performed. Back on Earth they’d fudged the laws slightly (slightly? Completely) to allow for a large proportion of the Expedition to receive therapy before they’d left. The advances he’d made to genetics in general were amazing, but he’d only achieved 68% success and he’d hoped for better.

But it was really very good, all things considered; still, the more people who could use Ancient technology the better—it meant he wouldn’t have to sit in the chair. So after the incident with Rodney he poured over his notes again to try to figure out how to activate expression in ATA negatives somehow. And—and maybe they were missing some other ARGs—Ancient Related Genes. Maybe there would be something in the database they could uncover, if they ever translated it.

He’d wondered if any of the Athosians would take to therapy – he’d managed 68% coverage in the people from Earth, where it was known the Ancients had hybridised with the native population. If they had done something similar, perhaps some of the people here could receive it, too. He made a note to ask Elizabeth about the feasibility of doing it.

It was slow work, and he was honestly more excited by the Ancient medical equipment they’d found, which was so far ahead of anything they had on Earth he’d probably have to spend a few weeks coming to terms with all the things that he’d be able to do.

What would his mother say?

But more pressing than his personal genetics projects was the maintenance of their medical supplies. They’d packed enough with them to last two years, if properly rationed; three at a stretch. They had some materials to make more, but he hadn’t found anything yet that resembled a drug production line and that was worrying.

Carson sighed and read over his notes one more time. There hadn’t been a major medical incident yet, thank God, so all he had was time.

*

What a load of absolute shit. Practically on his first off-world mission, Rodney was going to die. Machine analysis said so, and Kavanaugh had almost swooned with glee. He’d even said ‘I told you so’ after the analysis was complete.

 _Sheppard_ had got himself attacked by some—some bug thing that Beckett had said was probably a primitive relative of the Wraith. Which was fucking brilliant. So on the way back to the stargate—a space gate, which ordinarily would have been cool, but was now fucking terrifying and just utterly cretinous to produce—the ‘jumper had got stuck.

So they were going to die. Ford and Teyla didn’t seem to understand just how serious a problem it was, but Rodney kept trying everything he could think of to fix it. If he was going to die, he was going to die doing something to fix the problem.

They hadn’t even found anything useful of the damned planet except a cave _filled_ with life-sucking Wraith bugs. Iratus bugs, Teyla called them. Irritant bugs, more like it. Everything Beckett suggested to try seemed only to make the damned thing hang on for dear life, and Rodney was making only minimal progress in retracting the engine pods. Sheppard was going to die, and the rest of them with him. And Kavanaugh was consistently moronic, and Rodney made a mental note to give him grunt work for the duration of the Expedition if he made it out alive.

Scratch that. Rodney opened a private channel with Zelenka to make sure it happened regardless. If he was going to die, the least he could do with his dying efforts was to ensure Kavanaugh’s life was hell.

The Czech’s reply had been—appropriate, Rodney felt, given the circumstances. Ford and Teyla were pushing him, asking if there was anything else he hadn’t tried. So he did the only thing he could think of, and knew that if it didn’t work they’d be _dead…_

Oh. He’d done it. They were going to live. That was—that was good. He almost collapsed from relief.

*

Teyla had lived with the Earthers for some time now. Her view of them had not changed, not in the light of recent experiences. They remained the single greatest hope the people of Pegasus would have for the future, unless the Ancestors themselves returned. They were strong. They met disasters and conflict not with meek acceptance but with a fierce desire to survive. They were resourceful and knowledgeable.  

She had been sure that she was going to die in the puddlejumper. That they were all going to die. Their Machines had agreed. And yet they hadn’t, they had survived and the Major was okay. Despite everything, the Earthers had come out alive.

They were naïve to the ways of Pegasus, to its dangers and its peoples. But they could learn—and they showed a _willingness_ to learn. She had learnt that much of their technology was adapted and refined from alien designs, but that much of it too was their own; they took what was best from other worlds and people and added it to their own expertise.

These were a people Teyla could work with. 

She would begin to introduce them slowly to key Pegasus cultures. First the Hoffans, and then perhaps they would visit the dead world of Sateda—to glean whatever they could from the ruins. Whatever was left. When their food stores began to dwindle, they would seek the Genii. And others still—worlds who could offer them perhaps more in material means than could the people of Athos. But she would ensure that Athos had its place in the fight with the Wraith.

Athos would be the guiding light. Athos would provide knowledge, contacts and friends. And the people of Athos were not without their own capacity for learning, for exchanging knowledge and ideas.


End file.
